Hack the Cybersecurity Interview

Prepare for cybersecurity job interviews across various roles, from entry-level to expert positions.

It covers topics like answering technical and behavioral questions, understanding different cybersecurity roles and developing important soft skills.

It includes information on salaries, career paths, and how to find jobs in tough markets.

⭐Masterclass

Deploying Databases in K8s with PostgreSQL, CloudNative-PG, and Ceph Rook on Amazon EKS

Kubernetes and Access Management API, the new authentication in EKS

How Netflix solved the issue with Java 21 virtual threads

Does Talos Kubernetes and Omni live up to the hype?

Understand your Kubernetes cost drivers and the best ways to rein in spending

🔍Secret Knowledge

Hack the Cybersecurity Interview

Troubleshooting: Terminal Lag

Monitor these Kubernetes signals to help rightsize your fleet

Getting Started with Cilium Service Mesh on Amazon EKS

How AppsFlyer migrated from Kafka to Kubernetes using Karpenter

⚡Techwave

Introducing OpenAI o1

Elasticsearch is Open Source, Again

Oracle to offer 131,072 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs via its cloud

Why eBPF is critical and how it’s getting better

Juniper adds AI cloud services to its Apstra data center software

🛠️Hackhub

High-performance server for NATS.io

A collection of Bash One-Liners and terminal tricks

distributed key value NoSQL database that uses RocksDB as storage engine

Build, Share and Run Both Your Kubernetes Cluster and Distributed Applications

Run your deep learning workloads on Kubernetes more easily and efficiently

Cheers,

Shreyans Singh

Editor-in-Chief

Deploying Databases in K8s with PostgreSQL, CloudNative-PG, and Ceph Rook on Amazon EKS

This article explains how to deploy and manage a PostgreSQL database on Kubernetes using Amazon EKS. It combines CloudNativePG, a PostgreSQL operator, with Ceph Rook, a storage orchestrator, to ensure data persistence and high availability in a Kubernetes environment. A step-by-step guide is provided for deploying and configuring these tools, including using Helm charts, setting up storage with Ceph, and monitoring the database cluster.

Kubernetes and Access Management API, the new authentication in EKS

In AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service), the new authentication and access management system simplifies how users and worker nodes access Kubernetes clusters. Previously, access was managed using an "aws-auth" ConfigMap, which could be complex and prone to errors. Now, AWS introduces the EKS Access Management API, allowing users to authenticate through AWS IAM directly and authorize Kubernetes actions via Kubernetes RBAC. This approach removes the need for managing ConfigMaps manually, offers predefined EKS Access Policies, and enhances security by eliminating hidden root users. Additionally, integration with Terraform makes access control easier to implement and manage.

How Netflix solved the issue with Java 21 virtual threads

In Java 21, Netflix encountered an issue with virtual threads, which are lightweight threads designed to improve concurrency by suspending and resuming automatically. The problem involved some Netflix services using Java 21, Spring Boot 3, and Tomcat, where servers stopped processing requests due to sockets stuck in a `CLOSE_WAIT` state. Virtual threads were getting "pinned" to operating system threads while waiting to acquire locks. Since all OS threads became blocked, Tomcat couldn't process incoming requests, causing the system to hang. The underlying issue was traced to locking mechanisms in virtual threads, leading to thread contention and blocked OS threads.

Does Talos Kubernetes and Omni live up to the hype?

Talos Kubernetes and Sidero Omni live up to the hype by providing an intuitive and efficient way to set up and manage Kubernetes clusters. With Omni, you can easily create a Talos cluster without needing to access your virtual machines directly, making the process more streamlined. Setting up clusters, scaling nodes, and even upgrading Kubernetes versions are straightforward, with minimal manual intervention required. While there are some areas for improvement, like simplifying static IP configuration, the overall experience is highly positive.

Understand your Kubernetes cost drivers and the best ways to rein in spending

To reduce Kubernetes-related costs, it's important to monitor key cost drivers such as CPU, memory, storage, and networking. Costs are driven by resource usage and the rate at which they are consumed, so reducing unnecessary usage and optimizing resource allocation is key. Over-provisioning, idle resources, and inefficient scaling are common cost culprits. Regularly adjusting resource requests, leveraging auto-scaling tools like Horizontal Pod Autoscaler, and monitoring metrics with tools like Grafana and Prometheus can help optimize usage.

Hack the Cybersecurity Interview

"Hack the Cybersecurity Interview, Second Edition" is a comprehensive guide designed to help individuals prepare for interviews across a wide range of cybersecurity roles. The book covers technical and behavioral interview questions for positions like cybersecurity engineer, penetration tester, and CISO, while also offering tips on personal branding, stress management, and negotiation. It provides real-world advice and industry insights, making it an essential resource for anyone looking to succeed in the competitive field of cybersecurity.

Troubleshooting: Terminal Lag

In this troubleshooting session, Tavis Ormandy investigates why launching the xterm terminal on his Windows machine is significantly slower compared to Fedora. He identifies that Windows applies an animation effect that delays interaction with the terminal. Through a series of tests and debugging, he discovers that the X server software (X410) adds unnecessary animation effects, which can’t be disabled directly. He uses a debugger to bypass the issue, improving the performance slightly. After further optimizations with features and caching processes, he brings the Windows terminal's performance closer to Fedora’s, significantly reducing the lag.

Monitor these Kubernetes signals to help rightsize your fleet

To ensure your Kubernetes environment is both cost-efficient and sustainable, it's crucial to monitor signals like CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network utilization. Over-provisioning leads to wasted resources and high costs, while under-provisioning can degrade performance. Watch for indicators such as high resource usage, slow application performance, or low utilization to fine-tune your setup. Tools like Prometheus and Grafana, along with autoscaling, can help you dynamically adjust resources, ensuring optimal balance, reduced costs, and improved sustainability.

Getting Started with Cilium Service Mesh on Amazon EKS

The blog post explains how Cilium, an open-source networking and security solution powered by eBPF, enhances network connectivity between workloads in Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service). Cilium provides advanced networking, load balancing, encryption, and observability without the need for sidecar proxies. It integrates seamlessly with Amazon EKS to improve microservice communication, multi-cluster networking, and network policy enforcement. Cilium Service Mesh, built into Cilium, leverages eBPF and Envoy to offer high performance and low overhead for traffic management, security, and monitoring.

How AppsFlyer migrated from Kafka to Kubernetes using Karpenter

AppsFlyer, a global leader in mobile attribution, migrated their Kafka infrastructure to Kubernetes using Amazon EKS, simplifying management and improving performance. By switching from EC2 instances to Graviton-powered nodes, they achieved a 75% increase in throughput, 58% better write I/O, and reduced costs by 30%. AWS solutions like Strimzi Kafka Operator, Rancher’s Local Path Provisioner, and Karpenter autoscaler helped optimize local storage management and scaling. This transition cut CPU core usage in half and enhanced AppsFlyer's Kafka cluster’s scalability, efficiency, and resilience.

Introducing OpenAI o1

OpenAI has introduced the "OpenAI o1" series, a new set of AI models designed to focus more on reasoning through complex problems, such as those in science, coding, and math. These models think more carefully before responding and perform significantly better than previous models in areas like math, coding competitions, and complex scientific tasks. Alongside the main "o1-preview" model, there is also a smaller, cheaper "o1-mini" model aimed at developers.

Elasticsearch is Open Source, Again

Elasticsearch is officially open source again as Elastic has added the AGPL license alongside its existing licenses (ELv2 and SSPL). This move allows Elasticsearch to be called open source under an OSI-approved license, clearing up any confusion caused when Elastic changed its licensing three years ago due to conflicts with AWS. While the license change led to a fork by Amazon, Elastic's partnership with AWS has strengthened, and now users have more licensing options without any impact on current usage.

Oracle to offer 131,072 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs via its cloud

Oracle has announced it will offer 131,072 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs via its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Supercluster, starting in 2025, to support large language model (LLM) training and other AI use cases. This offering aims to meet the growing demand for GPUs, which are essential for generative AI development but in short supply due to limited availability of high-bandwidth memory (HBM). .

Why eBPF is critical and how it’s getting better

eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a crucial open-source technology for Linux, providing powerful capabilities for networking, monitoring, and security by allowing safe execution of code in the kernel. It enhances network visibility, reduces patching cycles, and improves performance monitoring. Netflix, for example, uses eBPF for efficient traffic management and security.

Juniper adds AI cloud services to its Apstra data center software

Juniper Networks has updated its Apstra data center software with new AI-powered features, including a cloud-based suite called Apstra Cloud Services and the new 5.0 version of the software. Apstra uses AI to manage network configurations, ensure security policies, and monitor performance across both physical and virtual infrastructures. It now includes App/Service Awareness and Impact Analysis to help data center operators monitor application performance and quickly address issues.

nats-io/nats-server

NATS is a high-performance, cloud-native messaging system designed for modern distributed systems, offering secure and efficient communication between digital services, devices, and systems. It supports over 40 client languages.

onceupon/Bash-Oneliner

"Bash-Oneliner" is a blog focusing on simple and effective bash commands for tasks like data parsing and Linux system maintenance. The commands are compatible with systems like Ubuntu, Amazon Linux, RedHat, Linux Mint, Mac, and CentOS. The blog covers topics such as variable manipulation, system management, math operations, and networking.

apache/kvrocks

Apache Kvrocks is a distributed key-value NoSQL database that uses RocksDB as its storage engine and is compatible with the Redis protocol. It aims to reduce memory costs and increase capacity compared to Redis. Kvrocks supports key features like asynchronous replication, high availability with Redis Sentinel, and a centralized cluster management system that works with any Redis cluster client.

sealerio/sealer

Sealer is a tool that simplifies the delivery of distributed applications by packaging a Kubernetes cluster and all application dependencies into a "ClusterImage." A ClusterImage functions similarly to a Docker image, containing everything needed to run the application, such as container images, YAML files, and Helm charts. Users can write a "Kubefile" to build this image and a "Clusterfile" to describe how to run it.

kubedl-io/kubedl

KubeDL is a CNCF sandbox project that simplifies running deep learning workloads on Kubernetes. It offers features like unified scheduling for training and inference, advanced optimization, and native model tracking using Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs).

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